Final Day at TCI!

Wow! Last full day here!! Every time I did something throughout the day I just thought, "this is the last time I'll be doing this"! It was so sad! :(

We began the day with our last morning meeting where we went around sharing our favorite memory for the semester. After that we spent the first half of the morning packing and cleaning up the center. Then, after lunch, we all went to a new beach we haven't been to yet. It was on an island right across from the center, so we had to take a boat to get there. It was a beautiful spot and a great way to spend our last day here. We spent most of the time in the water...learning how to use a paddle board (which is a lot harder than it looks!). We baked in the sun and played games for a few hours until it was time to head back for dinner. Our last dinner here. It was delicious too...BBQ chicken wings, rice, veggies, and fruit! :)

Once dinner was over we all got ready for our evening banquet. The night consisted of singing songs, receiving awards, watching videos and slideshows, and dancing in the rain. It was such a great way to end the last night here. We all pulled out glow sticks and jumped around in the pouring rain with thunder and lightening in the background. It was beautiful every time the sky lit up!

I still cannot believe this trip is coming to an end. We all have grown so close here and become a huge family. I live with these people and see them every single day, and now most of us will probably never see each other again. It is really depressing to think about. Good thing we have facebook to keep in touch, because I really feel we have made bonds here to last a life time. This has honestly been the BEST experience of my life, and I will cherish it forever. I am so blessed to have my family and friends support my goals and life choices and I cannot express how much I appreciate all of you who have been by my side. I especially want to thank my parents, because if it wasn't for them this amazing journey would have never happened. I love you guys so much!!! With that said, this will be my last blog for the time being as I head back to my normal life in about 24 hours. Tomorrow will be a full day of travel for me and I won't be arriving home until about 9 at night. As happy as I am to see everyone I love, it is a bittersweet feeling to leave the beautiful TCI. I definitely plan to visit in the future, and I hope all of you who have been following my blog hope to give this wonderful island a chance as well. I will miss this place I have called my home for the last month...but at the same time I am ready for my next adventure (trust me, there is already one in the making)! Thank you everyone who has been reading my blog, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Have a wonderful rest of your night, Happy 4th of July all! :)

My newest family!!

The pristine waters I will miss so much!

Turks and Caicos<3

:)

SEE YOU GUYS SOON!!!!

Last Weekend!!!

I didn't have much of an opportunity to write a blog yesterday, so this one will have a re-cap of yesterday and today!

Saturday morning I was supposed to go on my last dive here, but I had a malfunction again :( I already was in the water and at the very bottom of the ocean when I noticed I was to heavy and my BCD wasn't working. I had to swim all the way back up to the boat and have one of the interns fix it really quick. It was easy to fix and it happens from time to time, so I thought I was lucky and able to continue the dive. But, when I began to descend again I couldn't get my left ear to equalize, which means I probably went up to fast the first time I ascended. This totally sucked, and after trying for five minutes I gave up and made my way back on the boat. I was really bummed I had to miss the last dive, but I know I have plenty more to follow in the future. Dad...this just means we need to plan a dive trip as soon as possible when I come home!! :) Also, on a brighter note, for the 5 minutes I was underwater before I noticed my BCD wasn't working, I saw a shark and a queen trigger fish (which is really rare to see because they are endangered!). It was awesome, it came up and swam right by me! I guess it wasn't that much of an unsuccessful dive!

After the dive lunch rolled around and after was community engagement. We taught some grammar, and read some stories to our student. He invited us to go to his church on Sunday when we were done with class. We said we would attend, even though we wouldn't know anything the Pastor would be saying (it is a Haitian church).

The rest of the afternoon everyone was exhausted and just hung out around the center and relaxed. Much later, after dinner, we all went out into the town again for our last Saturday here. It was a lot of fun, and we were able to stay out later than normal because everyone has been being so good with the curfew. As much as I'm ready to go back to my normal life, it was sad to think none of us will be stepping foot in our favorite places here anymore.

The last time Kelsey and I will see Lars!!

As for today, I had to get up a little earlier than I wanted to because I was part of the brunch kitchen crew. From 9 to 11 this morning my kitchen crew and I cooked for everyone at the center. Okay...I didn't really cook that much. Fortunately I was paired with a group of people who know how to utilize the kitchen LOL. But, I was proud of my one dish: sauteed potatoes and veggies! :) The breakfast was a huge hit, we made crepes with the option of spinach, ground turkey, strawberries, chocolate, or caramelized apples as the filling. Also, along with my dish, there were hash browns and deviled eggs. It was delicious!!

Right from brunch I headed to the Haitian church. It was very interesting. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but they welcomed us nonetheless. They made an announcement to "the school for field studies students" at the beginning of the service, telling us how thankful they were that we showed up even though we do not understand, that they hope we get pleasure out of the service, and God Bless us for coming. It was really neat :) Like I said...EVERYONE knows who we are here haha! During the service, the one who welcomed us in the beginning came up to where me and my friend were sitting and gave us a Bible, telling us what section the Pastor was preaching on. It was very thoughtful of her!

As soon as I got back from the service we noticed almost everyone had gone to the beach, so we headed in the same direction. We all spent almost the whole day there since it is the last time we would be able to go. We went when the tide was out, so we were able to walk towards this small island a little ways out. When we got there we all found a cliff we could go diving off, it was a blast! I've never gone cliff diving before, so I really enjoyed it. After many hours there and at the beach we headed back to shower and get ready for dinner. So now you all are caught up to speed! The rest of the evening will probably be really relaxing because we all are worn out here. It is nice not having to worry about any school work, that's for sure! :) So I hope you all have a really good evening! I have some really cool pictures from today, but they are not up on the server yet so I will post them tomorrow. Good night everyone :)

Presentation Day!

Good evening everyone! Sorry it's so late, I just now got back from an event here on the island called the Fireman's Ball! But more about that in a minute...first let me tell you how my morning went!

I woke up, and after saying goodbye to one of the interns who has been here over a year, my group got together to wrap up our presentation. First, we all got our snorkel gear on and headed to the docks to take some good pictures to put on our powerpoint. After we made it look pretty, we did some last minute editing and split up who was going to say what. We took the time before lunch to practice learning what we were going to say and then the time after lunch until 4 p.m. actually practicing it all together. We got it down pretty good, and eventually it was time to present. All of us students and the majority of the staff listened to each group present for two hours. Our group was the fourth to present. We did pretty good :) But...I'm anxious to see how she is going to grade it! I'm just glad it is over...and now I am officially done with schoolwork and I can just relax and have fun the last few days here (can you believe it's already almost been a month?).

By the time we finished it was time for dinner, but we only had some snacks because we were going to be having dinner at the Fireman's Ball tonight. We have been planning on going to this event since the first week we arrived here, we all paid $20 for a ticket that included a three course meal. It is a fundraiser and a special acknowledgement to the firemen here on South Caicos. I honestly cannot even put into words how the whole thing panned out and the overall vibe I got from it, but let me try to explain the best I can. The event was supposed to start at 7 p.m., and it didn't officially begin until about 9:45 p.m. (we did expect it to start a little late, because that is how things are here on the island, but not THAT late). Throughout these three hours, us students and fellow teachers (who might I add were about 95% of the people there), listened and occasionally dance to some of there music playing. Eventually though, everyone got tired, thirsty, and starving. When the ceremony did begin, the firemen (and one fire-woman), all lined up on stage while the chief officer introduced them. There were only 6 of them on the stage, and there is a total of 12 on the entire island. The chief officer mis-pronounced one of the names wrong, and he stuttered the entire time. It was supposed to be a formal event, but to be honest if that was ever an event that took place at home it would have been thought of as a joke. It was sad because this was a serious event to them, the chief even mentioned how he knows it is not a very nice event but next year will be better...that really broke my heart to hear him say that :( I'm not trying to bag on the event and my evening though, I am just trying to give you all an idea of how different things are done here. Overall, I really enjoyed the effort they put into the ball and it was really cute to hear them make speeches and honor the men on the island. I do wish there were more locals there for support though, just for their sake. For dinner we had a salad, rice/chicken/crab, and cake, and for drinks they handed out canned soda. It was all pretty good! :) Despite the fact that it took a while to get things started, we all kept ourselves occupied and waited patiently for everything to take off. Honestly, the chance to go to a Fireman's Ball on South Caicos is not an opportunity that comes around often, so to celebrate with them was heart warming.

So now that it is past midnight here I am more than ready to go to bed! I hope you all had a great night! :)

 The cake SFS made for them :)

 It is hard to see, but this is where the even took place.

Me patiently waiting for dinner :)

Presentation Preparation

Today consisted of group work all day and all night, literally. My group just now finished everything for tomorrow. All we have to do in the morning is add in some pretty pictures and practice it all together to ensure it lasts 15 minutes! So basically, we all had to listen to a lecture on how to properly analyze our data we collected. Once we learned this, we were sent off to do it on our own with our actual data. My group analyzed everything within an hour and began putting all the information we need on the powerpoint. We worked all the way up until lunch and then continued again after it. We did take a couple hour break where I read my book (I'm almost finished), and then after dinner we started again. I am so happy we are pretty much done now, and I'm even more excited to think that after tomorrow at 4 p.m. when we present these we will be done with school work for the rest of our trip, yay!! :)

I will probably finish my book tonight, and I already have the second book in the trilogy for me to begin once I am done! I know today wasn't very exciting, and it was a really short blog...so here are some various pictures from some of my days here I have yet to show you all. Have a great night everyone! :)

 Beautiful flamingos at the salinas!

 Cute little seahorse, we caught him and put him back in the ocean after everyone got a good picture!

 Big cow just roaming around (the wild cows, donkeys, and horses were definitely a surprise to me when I got here)

The gorgeous view from my room, I'm not sure if you can see it, but there is a rainbow in the sky :)

Field Research: Day 3

After enjoying delicious chocolate chip pancakes this morning, my group was the first to head out to collect data for our last field research day. We got it all done within an hour and headed back to the research center to enter in all of our data we found. Tonight, our teacher will be putting together all of the data from all 6 of the groups and be sending us the results. It is our job to analyze the data and use it to test our hypothesis we conducted. We have until Friday to put it all together and create a powerpoint to present to everyone here. I think we have all day tomorrow to work on the project and learn the specifics from our teacher on how to analyze it correctly. My group has already started our powerpoint, so all we have to do is analyze our data and come up with a conclusion. It is this side of the program, the research, that enjoys me the most! :)

Examining one of our quadrates.

 Another quadrate.

A little friend while we were analyzing :)

Later in the afternoon, once we all finished lunch, it was time for my group to go out and dive! I had all of my gear set up, on my back, and was ready to fall back in the water when I noticed my air tasted funny. I had my dive master smell it and taste it also and she too said something was wrong. So...unfortunately I had to sit out on the dive :( It wasn't too bad, I just fell asleep on the boat and tanned. I thought I would get nauseous from the waves, but it was actually relaxing. The only thing that really makes me upset is when we returned to the center I had the Dive Safety Officer check my air and he said everything was fine with it! Which means something was wrong with my regulator. So we cleaned my regulator and tried it out again and everything tasted fine. Something must have spilled on my regulator from the dive shed until we reached the dive site (it tasted like gasoline!). Basically, if I would have just swished my regulator around a little bit in the salt water I would have still been able to go on my dive, urrgh!! However, I am a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason", so I keep telling myself something bad may have happened if I did go on the dive. At least it wasn't my last dive here either, I still have one more on Saturday! :)

Right when we got back from the dive it was about dinner time. It was very good tonight, we had pasta, garlic bread, veggies, and fruit! For tonight...the groups that didn't go night diving last night are going tonight instead. So I have the night to just relax again! I started a new book called "The Hunger Games" and I plan on reading it all night! It's a trilogy too, so once I'm done I'll be able to move onto the next (I love books like that)! Well I'm going to go read, so have a good evening all! :)

Field Research: Day 2 (& A Night Dive!)

This morning was pretty relaxing, we had field research all day long, but we were split up into two groups. I was part of the second group so I had until after lunch to do whatever I wanted! I spent this time napping and reading a book :) After lunch, it was my group's time to go snorkel and collect some data. We went through the same process as last time by laying out the transect and collecting fish information within our transect. We got through it pretty quickly so we were able to snorkel around for a little while until the other snorkelers were done collecting there data. I saw another cowfish, but this time it was bright purple. There was also a group of three stingrays grazing on top of some seagrass :)

By the time we got back it was getting close to dinner, so we decided to play another round of volleyball! It was so much fun today everyone was getting into it! Right before dinner we had to help carry in all of the dry food shipment we just received. It was cool to get a "behind the scenes" tour of how they do things here as far as food goes. They stalk up in bulk and even set aside a ton of food for the hurricane shelter just in case. With the food shipment also came t-shirts for all of us students. I love getting clothes, haha! They are just plain white with the SFS logo on the back and front, but I'm excited to wear mine! :)

Once dinner was over I had to hurry and get ready for my night dive! I'm not going to lie...I was very nervous for this. But now I can honestly say it was one of my most favorite experiences of my life!!! From the second we rolled back into the water to me stepping back onto the boat in the end I was in complete awe. First, when I plunged into the water I landed in a school of squid, which light up in various ways at night. Then as we began to descend I was able to see the beautiful ocean for what it really is. During the day we cannot see certain spectrums of light that we have the opportunity to see at night with the dive light. All of the coral and sponges were bright neon colors like blue, purple, green, yellow, and orange (and I thought they were pretty during the day). Even the fish were different colors from what I would normally see during the day, they were absolutely stunning. Our dive was at the arch, so we were able to go under it and see the different life it has at night. We saw an arrow crab (also known as a spider crab) that was just sticking fish into its mouth left and right. There were about 5 lionfish hanging upside down on the walls too. Hanging down from the arch is this giant sponge that is bright orange, and as I passed it I shone my light over it and saw something bright purple. There was a fish sleeping right side up inside one of the sections of the sponge!! After the arch and until the very end of our dive we were stalked by a barracuda. They really like shiny things so it was attracted to all of our lights. At our safety stop on our way up we all put the light to our chest and swished our hands around in the water really fast and you could see the bioluminescent things just glowing in the water. It is so crazy what is really there that we cannot see, we swim through them the entire time but they only light up if we  move really fast. It was cool because on our way back into the dock we could see bright green bioluminescence throughout all of the waves from the boat! Everything was just so eye-popping and colorful, it was by far my favorite dive yet!!!

So, after two waterfront activities pretty much back to back I am extremely tired and ready for bed!! With that said, good night everyone! :)

BTW...this isn't a picture I took or even the one I saw tonight, but I wanted to give you all an idea of a what a spider crab looks like! :) 

Final Exam Officially Over!

Wahoo! The pressure of this exam is finally gone and I cannot express how ecstatic I am!! After a full day on non-stop studying I am burnt out from the books. Although, as much as I was happy when it was over and I sent it to all my teachers, I was a little upset because I felt like we should have been given more time. We have three teachers here and it was a combination of all of their lectures, separated into 3 parts. For my first teacher, we had 9 short answer questions (which are a few sentences long), and then we had 2 essays! My second teacher had 4 questions that we had to write a paragraph each to explain the questions. Lastly, my third teacher had about 15 questions that was a combination of short answer and paragraphs for the answers. We had to complete all three parts within two hours! It was definitely a time crunch, and when they told us we had 15 more minutes I started freaking out because I like to skip around a lot and come back to questions. At that point I raced through all of the ones I had skipped and finished them. I got all of it done in time, but it would have been nice to have an extra 30 minutes or so to go over everything and maybe explain in better detail about some questions. But, what is done is done and now I'll just be waiting for my grade!

After the exam was lunch, and then right from lunch we had a field trip to a beach call Coast Guard. It is at the very North tip of South Caicos and is a really good site for mangroves (which is the nursery habitat for a lot of fish species). We brought along all of our snorkel gear and headed out in three different vehicles. On the way we stopped and took pictures of pretty scenery as well as the occasional donkey that was on the side of the road. We actually pulled up to a group of donkeys together, and there were about 4 baby donkeys. They were so cute!!! :) When we arrived at the beach we were split up into two groups. One group went straight down to the mangrove site, and the other went out to the other side of the beach and rode the current all the way around in a loop back to the mangrove site. I started out at the mangrove site. When we got in the water we had to swim over a patch of upside down jellyfish before we were able to look around and swim off by ourselves. Even though they sting you, I cannot deny how beautiful they are! Some of them were really big (like bigger than my head) and some were as small as my palm...but they were all different colors and mostly neon! Once we swam over them I snorkeled along the coastal line where all of the mangroves were. These aqua plants have prop roots that stick out of the water, and in between all of the roots is where all of the baby fish are. It was really cool to see all of the fish I have been studying, identifying, and looking at outside our research center in a mini-form. They were so little and adorable! I even saw a few baby barracudas (I think I saw the mommy too because it would not leave me alone and was following me the entire time I was along the coastal line, it was about 5 feet long!). There was also a really pretty orange, yellow, and purple starfish in the sand. After about 20 minutes of snorkeling at the mangrove site it was our turn to go ride the current on the other side.

For this part of the snorkel we had to swim against the current to get further out into the ocean, and then we just let the current take us along the tip of the island. We passed a huge deep area with some of the biggest coral I have ever seen! We also saw a Southern Stingray and an Eagle Ray too! The fish here were much bigger because it isn't a nursery ground, its the actual pelagic zone. After viewing all of the pretty coral and cool fish, we were brought back around to the mangrove site. The second time I was at the mangrove site I went to the opposite side of the coastal line and was snorkeling next to the sand flats. I still saw some fish, but it was mainly just pretty to look at, especially with the reflection of the waves from underwater. I saw a crab just running sideways and I followed him for a while, eventually he saw me and he scooted himself backwards into the sand a few times until he was completely invisible! It made me wonder how many other crabs was I swimming over? LOL! I also saw a lizard fish! It was the coolest thing I think I have seen here yet. This fish was swimming with its tail but also using his fins/arms to walk on top of the sand!! It was just skipping about and was super fast. I ended the snorkel looking at a really stunning cowfish, it was similar to the cheetah print ones I have mentioned seeing before, except this one was turquoise! It was beautiful!! Overall, I had a very successful snorkel :)

When we were done we hung out on the beach for a little bit and looked around the old coast guard buildings (which is why the beach is called coast guard) and then it was time to head back for dinner. I took a salt water shower right after dinner because I was covered in sand, and yes I feel clean now :) I'm actually laying in bed and really looking forward to my night. As soon as I post this blog I will have a relaxing evening watching a movie or reading a book, with no worries about studying or any homework, woo!! So with that said, good night everyone! :)

Here are some awesome pictures from today too!!

Just me :)

 Upside down jellyfish!

 Donkey

 Mangroves

 Pretty background!

 Beautiful<3

 In a cave

:)

Study, Study, Study!

Well, I don't have much to write again today. I slept in until 10:30 and woke up to eggs, bacon, and flavored scones! :) It was delicious. Throughout the day I studied, talked to my parents on skype, studied, did some laundry, studied, ate a turkey dinner, and studied some more. And now I am (you guessed it) still studying. I probably will continue until I fall asleep. The test tomorrow is a 2 hour exam, so there is a lot of information to cover. I'll let you all know how I did tomorrow! 

But...I do have all of my pictures over the past few days, so here you go! :)

 Hanging out at Daryl's last night!

A large group of us! :)

 Kelsey and I

 Doing handstand outside of Daryl's haha!

 The tent I slept in with 4 other girls on Friday night.

 Tent Roomies! LOL

 Alexis and I 

 Campfire :)

 This is from my dive on Friday afternoon.

 So beautiful!

 Nassau Grouper

 I love scuba diving!!!

Me checking out the coral :)

A beautiful morning...

Well, my night of camping was actually really fun! I thought I was going to be hot next to a group of girls in a small tent, and I also thought I was going to be attacked by bugs...but there was a nice breeze that fortunately eliminated both :) By the time we got there last night we had to hurry and put up our tents before it got dark. While we were doing this the staff was making a campfire! We all roasted marsh mellows and made some smores, we sang and played guitar, and we also played a bunch of little games. I felt like I was at a camp LOL! I woke up this morning to the sun, which was earlier than I had wanted...but I stepped outside and walked right to the water. It was absolutely beautiful :)

We got back just before lunch today, and directly after that it was time for community engagement. I taught the English lessons again today. We worked on grammar dealing with types of sentences and sentence structure. Again, our one student was very appreciative. He thanks me the entire time!! I really enjoy it :) After community engagement we had to do site clean up. I was in charge of cleaning out and wiping down all of the fridges, it was disgusting haha. After that I had free time until dinner and I read some of my book and took a nap :)

I woke up just in time for dinner, and since then I've been studying for my exam I have on Monday. I'm actually getting ready to go out right now to town! By the time we leave here the main restaurant, called Darrell's, will know all of us by our names :) Have a good night everyone!!

I'll put pictures up from camping tomorrow, they aren't uploaded yet...I apologize :)

Last day of classes!

Hi everyone! Today has been a really good day so far! We were able to sleep in an hour later, which was nice :) Then, we had our very last lecture!! After that we had a review for our exam on Monday that will be over all of the lectures we have had so far (I have a lot of studying to do this weekend). After that we had a couple of hours to study and relax before lunch. I got to talk to my parents on skype during that break and I loved it :) I miss you guys a lot and it was great to see you!! <3

After lunch I had another dive! The current was pretty strong today but it was still a good dive. We didn't see anything crazy, besides some huge grouper fish, hogfish, and barracuda. Other than that we were looking at the most beautiful scenery ever! The coral was joined into huge boulders and there were rows and rows of it. We were also swimming along side of a drop off so we got to look out and try to see if we could see anything. It was hard to make out some figures, which again made it kind of creepy, but like I said before it is hard not to get drawn to it. The visibility today was a little blurry, but for some reason it made the colors on the coral pop! They were so bright and it was absolutely gorgeous. We got some cool pictures, but that won't be up until tomorrow.

I just got done with dinner, and I'm posting this blog early because we are about to leave to go camping. We are staying the night on the beach tonight. I packed myself a TON of bug spray lol. I'm sorry to keep it so short but it is time for me to go. I'll be back tomorrow with some great pictures and news of how my over night trip went. Have a great night everyone!!

:)

Field Research: Day 1

Today was the first day where we didn't have to wake up and go straight to a lecture! :) It was great! Right after breakfast we went out in groups to different snorkel sites to collect data. I was part of the second group that went out...so for two hours this morning my other group got to work together to finish our paper! By the time we had to go out and snorkel we only had to do some last minute editing. For the field research, each group was in charge of collecting two different transect areas. Basically, we put down a huge measuring tape in a specific area (30 meters long) and documented all of the fish, coral, algae, etc. that we saw within 3 meters on both the left and right side of our transect line. It took about 40 minutes for each one. It was difficult to do because we also had to measure certain heights of some coral and determine what percentages of what were within our area, but I enjoyed every minute of it! When we got back we had to make sure we entered all of our data in a spreadsheet because we will be doing more than one day of field research. Depending on the weather, we should still get in two more days of field research next week before the groups have to analyze the data and create a presentation from it.

After lunch my group (for the paper that is due tomorrow) all got together and we finished our project! IT WAS THE BEST FEELING EVER! Again, we were supposed to go to the fishery plant today, but it was cancelled due to the lack of fish caught. Luckily, I still got my own little experience though. A few of my friends and I decided to walk into town to get some ice cream and snacks and on the way we stopped to watch the fisherman on the docks skin all of the fish for the day. The fisherman noticed me take pictures of him doing this and asked me to come try it...WHAT? haha! I was very nervous and disgusted at the same time but I did it. They were all laughing at me because of the face I was making LOL. He took the knife away quickly though as I was getting no where and was obviously not doing it right! We also played with the puppies that were just born a few days before we arrived on the island so they are only about 2 weeks old. They are soooo cute, I want to take one home! Finally after all of our little stops, we got to the store we originally set out for and brought back yummy snacks :) Once we all scarfed down ice cream, it was time for round 3 of the volleyball tournament. My team won today! We play best two out of three but we won the first two so we didn't even have to play another round. :)

Between volleyball and dinner I had time to take a nice saltwater shower (it is sad how much I enjoy those), and I actually feel decently clean right now :) Usually after my showers I like to stay in my room where I know I won't get dirty again. Especially because to go outside right now I would have to put on a ton of bug spray, and that is just a gross feeling. So, I'm just going to chill out for tonight, do a little homework and then watch a movie! I hope all of you have a relaxing evening as well, good night! :)

P.S. Tomorrow's blog will be early, as we are camping tomorrow night at the beach! :D

 The boat carrying all of our food!

 Studiously working...

 PUPPY! :)

 So cute!

 The fisherman skinning the fish.

 Me attempting to skin the fish lol.

 Volleyballing it up!

Scariest night of my life!

I'd like to start out my blog by letting you all know about my night last night. At about 2 a.m. here a huge thunderstorm broke out with rain, thunder, lightening, and wind. SO MUCH WIND. I woke up to it in the middle of a deep sleep and the first thing I thought of was everyone's clothing that was hanging on the clothes lines and if they were all going to be blown away. Luckily, as I was thinking about this I heard voices, apparently everyone else was thinking the same thing. I went outside and we all were frantically putting things away in people's rooms. When that was all done I laid back in bed and could not fall asleep for hours. All I could think about was if the door was going to be blown in, or the shutters knocked off, or even if some huge wave was going to come onto the research center. I was honestly scared for my life!! Eventually, we all woke up this morning to a very messy center and a gloomy day. 

Luckily, we didn't have a whole lot going on today, so the gloomy day set for a "relaxation" day. We started off learning about our next research project, which is again a group project. This one is much more interesting to me though because it has to do with marine life and actual research instead of policies and regulations (like our other project). Our group is determining the effects of fish population and coral reef cover inside and outside a Marine Protected Area. After we learned about everything we went out and did a practice research transect. Tomorrow we begin our actual field research. This project isn't due until next Friday, and we will continue our research until next Wednesday. After that we have until Friday to gather our data, analyze it, and make our powerpoint for Friday. It's going to be a lot of work and very time consuming, but it will definitely hold my attention :)

Once we finished our practice transect we were free to work on our projects that are due Friday until lunch. After lunch we had even more free time. We were supposed to go to a fish processing plant this afternoon today, but due to the storm last night none of the fisherman caught any fish today, so it had to be postponed to hopefully tomorrow. So, that left us with even more free time until dinner. It was awesome, a group of us made friendship bracelets (one of our favorite things to do here obviously) and watched "The Devil Wears Prada". Then, after dinner, we had even more spare time. So, now my group is trying to finish editing our paper! We are almost done, which is really exciting because I'm so over writing about this stuff (it has nothing to do with science and research). After this I am going to bed, and I can't wait haha! I just hope there isn't a storm tonight! Have a good rest of your night all! :)

P.S. Good news! Here are my pictures from my dive yesterday! :)

Green Sea Turtle

 A picture of me getting ready to take a picture.

 This is the huge Southern Stingray I was talking about, it was bigger than me!

 My dive group, I'm the second from the left in the back w/ the "OK" sign LOL.

 Some pretty fishies on the reef! 

 Me under the arch! :)

 Thumbs up! 

A little fun after our dive! :)

There are a ton of other pics too, I'll be putting them up on facebook soon :)